How to Update a Mobile Wallet Pass — and Engage 100% of Your Mobile Audience

You probably already know that mobile wallet passes are a fantastic way to connect with your customers on mobile — whether you have an app or not.

What you might not know, however, is that once someone downloads a mobile wallet pass to their phone, that pass stays there until the user deletes it.

That means that any mobile wallet pass your customer downloads is a footprint for your brand on their phone. When you consider the rising cost of getting any real estate on a user’s phone, you know that’s kind of a big deal.

The question is, are you making the most of that real estate?

Three of the Best Kept Mobile Wallet Secrets: Retention, Updates & Default Opt-In

There are three eye-opening things every mobile marketer and mobile product owner should know about mobile wallet passes to really understand the major opportunity:

1) Users Tend to Keep Mobile Wallet Passes on Their Phones

As we mentioned above, mobile wallet passes stay in your customer’s mobile wallet until they delete it. Our clients are seeing that about 85% to 90% of users retain wallet passes after initial download.

2) Passes are 100% Update-able — With No User Action Required

Every part of a mobile wallet pass can be updated. The images and copy on the front and the back can be completely changed out. Discount deals can be changed and updated, with new expiration dates. Loyalty program points can be updated in real time. Possibilities abound.

3) Default Opt-In for Notifications

On iOS devices, users are automatically opted in to receive push notifications from mobile wallet passes. That means that if you update your pass with a new deal, for example, you can let all passholders know with a notification that lights up their phone. (It may go without saying but we’re saying it anyway: abusing this messaging channel will almost certainly have a negative impact on your brand — at a minimum, it’s likely to lead to pass deletion.)

Taken together, these three features create a major opportunity to connect with your customers on mobile — whether you have an app or not.

The Modern Love podcast updated their mobile wallet pass whenever a the latest episode became available — and saw a 96% retention rate and a boost in conversions.

GameStop provides their members with a mobile wallet loyalty card that reflects its members’ tier status. And, users share these digital loyalty cards with family and friends, helping GameStop organically grow its customer base.

In our State of Mobile Wallet Marketing survey report, 77% of the consumers we surveyed said they’re interested in having expired mobile wallet coupons update to new offers on their phones. (81% of millennials want updates to coupons.)

Likewise, if mobile wallet loyalty cards are updated in real time with points and rewards, 73% of survey respondents are more likely to join the program. (83% of millennials would be more likely to join.)

How to Update a Mobile Wallet Pass With Urban Airship’s Reach Solution

All aspects of mobile wallet passes sent through Reach can be updated – imagery, text and field objects (i.e. values in fields).

Reach enables marketers to send updates, alerts and messages directly onto the user’s phone. Once you’re logged into the Reach composer (our user interface for Reach), go to your layout (see screen below), and make the changes to any specific field.

From there, select “Show advanced settings” to reference that a change was made to the field. A change message must contain the escape value “%@” for the message to be visible on the lockscreen. Then hit “Apply Changes”.

The Advantage For Developers

A pass that is fully updateable for ANY “field object” gives developers a lot options in terms of how they want to use the pass.

In the example below, we’ll show you how to make changes to “field objects” on the pass. This a field that holds a value — like the the number of loyalty points a user has accrued.

You can also set the pass to trigger notifications related to the changes, and customize what those notifications say based on the change. For example, when a loyalty point field hits a certain value, you could trigger a text notification letting the customer know they’ve earned a loyalty program reward or discount.

Each field object on an Apple Wallet pass can include an optional “change message value.” This is the text that is displayed in a notification on the user’s phone when the value associated with that field is updated.

The change message text must contain the escape value %@, which is replaced with the field’s new value. For example, “Gate changed to %@” where %@ is replaced with the new value for the associated field.

The following is an example of a pass field that includes an optional change message value using the key change message.

When updating a pass, if the specified value is different than what is currently included on the pass then the change message will be displayed on the user's device.

When sending an update through the Reach API that would look something like this: